I point out to you something that hits me harder than the thought that the Wolves are likely to make the playoffs.

Note that NO TEAM in the NBA is dumb enough to trade away an unprotected lottery pick........except the Timberwolves. While the Clippers also traded away the Wolves' pick, they did so for a young Chris Paul (a top 5 NBA player). The Wolves gave away the pick for Marko Jaric.

Wolves -- were thrown a lifeline from a passing ship in the middle of the Pacific and said, "No thank you, I will swim for it."

Clippers -- came home to find both Halle Berry and Salma Hayek in their bed and called their friend to come over and hang out.........if the friend paid $10,000,000 first.

While the Wolves seem to find .500 an impossible barrier to breach, it still is so nice to not have to watch a Kurt Rambis coached team.

Adelman is a 15 win improvement over Rambis (Adelman is 5 wins above an average coach, Rambis was 10 wins below an average coach). So you would expect the Wolves, just by switching coaches, to go 32-50 (26-40 over a 66 game schedule).

At the Wolves' current pace they are gonna go 31-35. So the extra 5 wins would seem to come from Rubio and the unbelievable added production of Love.

But certainly Rubio and a better Love are worth more than 5 wins, right? So you gotta figure they are worth 10-12 extra wins.

Could the Minnesota Timberwolves, honest to god, contend for the 8th seed in the West?????

Sorry -- I just have had so little hope for so long, I get carried away. It is like being a guy in college where a good looking girl talks to you and you start envisioning her and you on your honeymoon....

Having called Romney "pro-abortion, pro-gun control, pro-tax increase" on Sunday, Gingrich added the title "pro-gay rights" on Monday, in an acidic interview with Fox News. He rewound his last few days of attacks, combining all of his insults and all his vitriol into a string of remarkable assaults on Romney. "The conservative movement is not going to sit back and say, 'Oh yes, let's let Wall Street and Mitt Romney buy the election,'"

(Wrong, Newt, they are, they always do what the Rich Wing tells them).

Gingrich said. "So you're going to see a real grassroots fight. It will be people power vs. Goldman Sachs and Mitt Romney."

(and the people will lose, as always)

Gingrich's campaign began the day by sending out a press release noting that Romney has received $367,000 in campaign contributions from Goldman Sachs, the New York investment bank."Goldman Sachs received $10 billion in emergency loans and bailouts from the Federal Reserve during the Wall Street bailout," wrote Gingrich's communications director Joe DeSantis. "This raises the question: Are Mitt Romney's dishonest attack ads against Speaker Gingrich being indirectly funded by the US taxpayer while Governor Romney uses shady accounting gimmicks to avoid paying his fair share of taxes?"

Newt will have to go much, much harder to lock up and expand his lead in the hard-core racist vote. I suggest at tonight's debate:

1) Newt mentions that Florida and his home state of Georgia were part of the Confederacy while Massachusetts was an extremely solid abolitionist state. Newt, "Do you folks in Florida really want to go back to 1866 when you had to give black people rights??"

2) Newt mentions how Romney used illegal immigrants to do his lawn work while there were perfectly good American black children whom Mitt should have tricked into doing the job for free (ala Tom Sawyer).

Newt, "Does Romney hate children, slavery AND great literature written by a guy who used the N word a lot in Huckleberry Finn?"

3) Newt tears open his shirt to reveal a giant tattoo of the Stars and Bars. While this will no doubt gross out a lot of people, Newt can spin their disgust as hatred for the Confederacy, thus challenging voters to either, "love my flabby southern tattoo or vote for that abolitionist."

4) Newt should identify 5 federal laws that tomorrow he would allow Florida to nullify by a decree by the Governor OR a 45% secret ballot vote of the members of the Florida legislature. While I am sure there are 100 great candidates for nullification, I think you need to include:

a) The Civil Rights Actb) The Voting Rights Actc) The Clean Air Actd) The Clean Water Acte) Something else dealing specifically with rights of blacks and Hispanics.

While the health care law would be a candidate, that doesn't really stir up the base like these others will.

Newt should carry a picture (or portrait) of John C. Calhoun on stage to demonstrate his true love for states rights and nullification. If Romney cannot immediately identify the man in the picture and his approximate age when the portrait/picture was taken, Newt should shake his head in disgust and start screaming, "Carpetbagger!" either until he is dragged off stage or until the audience joins in the chant.

5) Newt needs to "quote" Tim Tebow as saying that Mormons hate Jesus and that is why Denver lost to New England. Tebow probably did think it at some point in time deep in the back of his mind, plus, is Tebow going to deny it when asked?

Newt, "I mean, Mormons baptize Jews post-death and they believe that The Lord traipsed around Palmyra, NY teaching Christianity to the Indians (Newt should say, "Redskins") and not very well apparently, since it didn't appear to stick for a couple thousand years." Will Tebow really defend this religion by saying he DOESN'T blame them? I doubt it.

Florida, in a way, is a perfect state to determine who will win the GOP race. There are far more Rich Wing folk than in SC. The racism is slightly dialed down in certain locales, but dialed way up in others. It is a state where the Poor Wing is heavily represented (drive 45 miles outside of Orlando and try to find a decent home anywhere). You have the wealthy folk going to South Beach and the dirt poor folk going to the rodeo.

If Romney is so hated that he cannot win a fairly moderate southern state like Florida, then he is left with trying to pick off big Democrat states to win the nomination (WA, OR, CA, NY, PA, MI, MD, MA). Sadly, that sort of leaves the GOP where they were in 2008 -- their base resides in the rural states, but their nominee appeals to the GOP in the urban states where they will NEVER win the general election.

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

OK, so it isn't quite $100B, but at this point it is almost a rounding error or an interest error.(Or when you are selling 4.4 iPhones a second, it may already be $100B).

$100 billion. My old high school has 100 kids in a class. If I want to, ala Michael Scott, send them all to the college of their choice, they will all choose a $70,000 a year school X 100 kids = $7,000,000 X 4 years = $28MM. K-12, everyone goes, $364MM.

To get up to $1B, I would need to agree to send every class to college for four years for the next 36 graduating classes.

And that is $1B. The ridiculous thing about it is this -- at the rate that Apple is earning cash, it couldn't spend the $1B without making way more than that much back. Even if Apple went to 36 schools my old school's size and sent 3,600 kids to college for 4 years, by the end of year 1, Apple has put WAY more cash into the pile than it has paid out.

Bill Gates is worth $50-80B. Try as he may, he has trouble giving away his money, and he isn't earning what Apple is earning. He does stuff like "give medicine to all of Africa" -- stuff like that. Cannot give away his fortune. A $5,000,000 annual revenue business is a good sized business that can employ a lot of folks. Apple could simply set up 200 such businesses and hope they made money. If not, it would never impact Apple's bottom line. Ever.

For those of you who do not know, the Basilica is a huge Catholic church on that end of town. What, exactly, was its lawsuit going to say? "Hey, no building a big stadium near me. It hurts Catholics...."

Come on, grow a pair. Now we are left with a "site" that is really no site. It will require the Vikes to play 3-4 years at the Gophers stadium and lose a shitload of money, and then the stadium goes right back into the ghost town end of town where nothing seems to grow.

Target Field in 3 years -- has spun off 30 bars or restaurants nearby. Metrodome -- 1 in 30 years.

If you look at the Timberwolves stretch, Flip had Kevin Garnett in his prime. As we see from his results after he was dealt to Boston, a Kevin Garnett in his prime should have been able to lead a team to the conference finals on a regular basis (and maybe even the title). Flip reached the second round of the playoffs....once.

Flip then went to Detroit where he took over a team one year removed from an NBA title and he.....never reached the NBA finals. Included in this stretch was a game where Flip allowed LeBron James to score something like 25 consecutive points in a playoff game. That cannot happen, ever. If you have to put 3 guys on LeBron and let 2 Cavs float wide open, you just cannot as a coach allow that level of dominance by one guy to continue.

Flip then went to the Wiz and........he has sucked.

So, based upon that record, what do we know about Flip? Has he ever led a team to a record or playoff performance that was unexpectedly good? No. Has he won without a start player? No. Has he developed young talent? I guess maybe Garnett, but after that, nope.

You wonder if this was just a case of Kevin Garnett being such a dominant player that his coach's general averageness/mediocrity was never exposed. And when he starts a year 2-15 and gets replaced by Randy Wittman, you wonder even more.

This is an awfully damaging comment. Think of it this way -- what if someone could actually change their skin color and said, "I can be black or white, but today I choose to be black because I like it better." Does that put them into a suspect classification where they should get legal protections? If I am about to be fired, can I become gay or become black or become some protected class so that it is harder to fire me?

Really opens a whole new can of worms from a legal analysis standpoint.

Wow. What a weak year. Jonah Hill's EXTREMELY reserved performance as a computer nerd gets a best supporting nod, as does Melissa McCarthy pooping in a sink in Bridesmaids. Wow. Woody Harrelson's nomination now doesn't seem so unusual.

Best original song -- 2 songs.

best animated feature -- Kung Fu Panda 2?????? Really????? Wow. Neither my 12 year old (at the time now 13) nor I enjoyed that film.

By the way, since it is mentioned here -- I am not sure that I have ever seen a movie more overrated than "Moneyball." Was it an interesting sports-related film with some not-so-subtle life messages? Sure. Was Pitt particularly good in it? No. Was Jonah Hill? No. Did we really need the 133 minute run time? No.

So, a movie that was a 7 out of 10 for me (only getting 7.8 out of 10 on imdb) is Oscar-nominated and has actors in the major categories??? Wow. Again, evidence of how bad the movies have been this year.

5 said it is trespassing and 4 said it is an invasion of privacy. No one thought it was acceptable.

Actually 5 said it is an invasion of privacy also. Sotomayor said that she probably agreed that it was an invasion of privacy, but she didn't need to reach that issue because it is a trespass.

Alito(!?!?!?!) actually has a fairly reasoned and rational concurrence where he explains the law, criticizes the majority's analysis, and raises issues for future discussion. Wow. What next? Mitt Romney appearing human and less entitled?

It is really, really amazing that the GOP seems intent on nominating a serial adulterer who was thrown out of his speaker's office by his Republican peers and who divorced his first wife when she had cancer.

But, as one commenter noted, Newt in the South knows that he can win so ling as he is "not outn*****ed" by anyone. In other words, white pride, my friends, white pride.

Remarkable. GOP Rich Wing folk are having repeated mini-strokes while counting their money.

I think that it is great that all of the sport media who so badly needed this old guy forced out before his final few games can now go literally spit or piss on his grave. Have at it folks -- you sped up his death and now you can rejoice.

Sorry, David, but you miss the point completely. If I built a $30 million mansion, then added a $30 million second house, and my total property value increased to $40 million, a reasonable person would say I didn't do the right thing. Is my property "better" with the second house on it? Sure. Should I burn down the original house or the second house and receive nothing in return? No. But the fact is, the two things together are not as good as the two things apart.

Wade should be carrying a 50-30 club, LeBron should be carrying a 60-20 club. Instead, they are carrying a 62-20 club. That is NOT getting good value.

Watched last night's game. My conclusion -- Mike Brown is not doing a good job with the Lakers, LeBron is about twice the player Kobe is, and the Lakers will implode by March.

Come on you South Carolina fans of multi-millionaires with good hair who hide their money in the Cayman Islands! Wherefor art thou?

Perry endorses Gingrich. Palin endorses Gingrich. Chris Christie tells Mitt to release his tax returns now!Romney has to schlog his way through both SC and FL before he can head back to kinder areas (i.e., very rich areas).

Tuesday, January 17, 2012

No player has ever averaged over five 3PA/G and also averaged 9+ rebounds per game. The closest anyone has ever come is Troy Murphy who averaged 4.9 3PA/G and over 11 rebounds a game a few years back for Indiana.

This demonstrates to me that Love is having a historically great season, and that Charles Barkley was one hell of a player.

Interestingly, limiting the inquiry to seasons since 1976, the player who best matches up with Love's points and rebounds barrage is -- Moses Malone: http://bkref.com/tiny/mWcZY

While Moses was certainly not hovering out by the 3 point line jacking a ton of shots, when you talk about getting 25 & 14 in the modern era, it is really only Moses (3 times) and one year from 28 year old Kareem. Moses had 9 seasons where he averaged above 13 boards a game.

The greatest rebounder since 1976 is probably either Dennis Rodman (7 seasons over 13 a game) or Moses, followed by Kevin Garnett (three seasons of greater than 13 and 2 greater than 12.5). Ben Wallace had 3 years of over 13 a game. Shaq, despite his mammoth frame, only had one season above 13.

Love is on his way to being on the list, but he really needs 4 years of over 12.5 to be considered.

So.....no national park service, no department in charge of Native American relations, no one regulating the hundreds of millions of acres of federal lands.....

I guess in his defense this is a better decision than eliminating the Commerce Department, since the Constitution seems to specifically require the feds to regulate commerce. But cutting a department that has existed since Zachary Taylor was elected President? I mean, talk about your aggressive cutting. Next up? Maybe the State Department?

"He is as good a politician as I've ever seen. ... He's really good at it. And I think he's very charismatic. And I think he's genuine. I think what he says he believes he believes. That's a very dangerous politician."

While the Wolves are 3-7 like last year, Adleman has made the very basic basketball analysis that if you force guys off the three point line and away from the rim and force them into mid-range shots, you are going to allow fewer points.

I especially like the description of Rambis's decision to give wide open threes as "unique."

I hope she makes money, because I saw Ace performing at a child's birthday party on The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, appearing to be really drunk. (Ace's performance was provided to the party as a birthday gift by another mom -- hey, congrats 4 year old! It is the guy who butchered "Drops of Jupiter" and "We Will Rock You" years before you were born!"). I was waiting for the kid's dad to say, "Get back in your mouse, and get the hell out of here."

Sunday, January 08, 2012

If you plug in guards getting under 30 minutes a game and averaging about 9/7/3, you get an old Mark Jackson, a young Nate McMillan http://bkref.com/tiny/Xp6sL and a 21 year old Ramon Sessions.

I definitely see Rubio as a step up from these player, but still, you would like to think you would see flashier names jump out at you.....I guess maybe my excitement over his play is a little excessive.

Now, if you look at Rubio's 13 point and 14 assist effort in 30 minutes of play, you start seeing names like Magic Johnson (who did it 12 times), Steve Nash (6) and John Stockton. http://bkref.com/tiny/1OLif Those are the names you like to see.

While, as always, you are splitting hairs when you get right down to evaluating the absolute suckiest (or greatest) if you sort by PER under 9 and offensive rating less than 97 and defensive rating greater than 106, you only get 5 guys.

Marc IavaroniSasha PavlovicGreg FosterGreg Kite andJoe Wolf.

It seems pretty clear that the battle for last comes down to Wolf v. Kite. They are both remarkably terrible. Then Foster and Pavlovic have very similar careers, and Iavaroni probably is only 5th worst.

Ok, this was only 5 years ago.... For those who say LeBron James is not a great player and not a great playoff performer -- he took this team to the NBA Finals. No other player who ever lived could have taken this team to the NBA Finals.

1 LeBronJames -- Where is he today? Coming off another 1st team all-NBA, was rated #1 player in the NBA by ESPN's panel of 100 NBA experts.

The hoops team has lost twice in a row at home, a place where they get called for 1 foul out of every 6 they commit. The football team also lost. Man, if I were a Packers fan I would be getting very nervous.

Please lord, do not allow your mighty servant Rick Santorum to take this right away from young unmarried men. We married men surrendered it long ago, but speaking as a guy who can remember years gone by, why punish the youngsters?

And Santorum wants the states to be able to make birth control illegal!?!? So......no sodomy AND if you have regular sex then you basically HAVE to try to have kids? I have always heard Rick Santorum referred to as a "jerk off" but now it appears that "jerk off" is the name of his sex platform for all of America. Lotion and towel sales should at least go up, er, explode, um, rise, uh, increase.

Monday, January 02, 2012

There is always a danger in the overuse of stats, or any other measurement tool used only on its own.

The best way to evaluate a basketball player, pro or college, is to watch him play every game, in person.

The second best way to watch a guy is to watch him play every game on TV.

Then comes reading his statistics, then comes watching game film, then comes working him out in practices/tryouts.

Since very few teams have the money to send a scout to watch every single live game, players are generally not evaluated very well. If you sat and physically watched a guy play 30 games in a year, you would know exactly what he could and could not do, what kind of players he played well against and what kind of players he struggled with. You would know how he reacts to pressure and to road crowds and to tough games and to easy games and to referees and to coaches.

Watching a guy play on TV gives you a good general feel of how a guy plays and what he likes to do, but you don't see him move and you don't see how physical he is or whether he has great or simply average athletic ability. You don't see what he can or will do away from the ball.

The only thing that watching a guy play in person won't do for you is evaluate how well a college kid plays against NBA superstars.

So why do we use stats? Someone watching Mike Miller might think he is a great shooter -- well, look at his attempts per game: he won't shoot the ball. Someone might think that a player like Kevin Garnett should be a great shot blocker ala Hakeem and David -- he isn't. He never has been. His game is steals and position and defensive rebounding. His defensive rebound rate in his prime was sick. Darryl Dawkins was a huge monster physically, not much of a rebounder.

Kevin Durant is a great scorer, but he really struggles trying to pass -- he has never averaged 3 assist a game before this year, and his 4.2 assists a game so far this year come with 3.8 turnovers a game.

What stat can we find to show that Kevin McHale was such an awesome low post scorer? (He was only in the top 10 in league scoring once and he only once made any all-NBA team).

He is #11 all-time in offensive rating.

If you cannot watch a guy a lot, you need to look at stats. Derrick Williams played 69 games at Arizona and blocked a total of 46 shots. So you know he is explosive........on one end of the court.....in his first 4 gqames with Minnesota he has.....0 blocks. I saw him play maybe 3 times in college, but I can tell you that a guy who is an undersized 4 who never blocked many shots in college is not going to become a big shot blocker in the NBA. Tim Duncan blocked 4 shots a game in college. Hakeem blocked 5. Theo Ratliff blocked 4 or 5.

I can tell you from watching JJ Barea in person that he is a shoot first guard who shoots a low percentage but who is very very active and rolls up big stats for a midget. Look at his college stats -- shot it 17-18 times a game in college and got 4 rebounds a game.

1) No one since October 1985 (the date from which basketball-reference.com has game records in its database) has ever had a game where they went 6 for 28 or worse and had 6 turnovers.Never. It has never occurred.

2) Over the same period of time, there have only been 5 players who have ever gone 6 of 28 or worse; Allen Iverson did it twice.

Two of those efforts (Darrell Griffith and Allen Iverson on March 27, 2005) were in wins, so that puts their games ahead of Kobe's.Ewing, Duncan and Antoine Walker all had at least 10 rebounds, so their production was good in some category.

The only other player whose awful game comes close to Kobe's is Allen Iverson's December 21, 2002 game in which he was 6 for 28 and had only 4 rebounds and 2 assists.

Kobe did outscore AI 16 to 13, but Iverson had only 4 turnovers to Kobe's 6. Iverson's 4 turnovers were matched by Walker, by Iverson himself, and almost matched (3) by Duncan. 4 turnovers in a 6 for 28 effort is not unheard of. 6 is.

So, I will call it -- Kobe just had the worst game of any player in the past 25+ years.

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About Me

2015 -- time for a new profile.
Summary: 1964-1966 -- Urbana, Illinois.
1966-1982 -- small town in western NY; football QB, baseball center fielder, 6th man on the basketball team (OK, I am not real proud of that).
1986-1989 -- Durham, NC law school watching the greatest college basketball program of all-time (OK, so I am biased).
1988 summer -- Minneapolis, MN -- bunch of really hot blonde girls walk around a lake and encourage me to come back to MN
1989-Present -- MN (couldn't resist the area)
Loves and Weaknesses -- hoops, politics, general trashy pop culture, pretty women.
Aspirations -- to some day match up with my driver's license weight; to have someone some day say to me, "You don't look that old."
Status -- wife, 3 kids born 1994, 95 and 98, 50 years old now in the rearview mirror, a big gut every day in the bathroom mirror, wide bodied, and, if I must say so myself, super smart.
Enjoy my Blog.......or just get the hell out.